San Francisco's Brides of March Celebrates 26 Years of Whimsical Wedding Processions

Something about 150 brides in thrifted wedding gowns streaming past Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church on a 70-degree Saturday afternoon hits different when you know none of them are getting married. That was North Beach on March 14, when San Francisco's Brides of March returned for its 26th year, filling Columbus Avenue with chiffon trains, tulle veils, and the particular chaos of a pub crawl that takes itself exactly as seriously as it should.

The event drew between 150 and 200 participants, all in thrifted or repurposed bridal wear, for a procession up Columbus Avenue that ended in what The Bold Italic accurately called "the mother of all would-be wedding receptions" inside Specs' Twelve Adler Museum Cafe, a 56-year-old North Beach institution packed with kitschy collectibles. Before that, the crowd hit Little Red Window at Columbus and Stockton as the first drink stop, with chilled rosé and fresh fruit margaritas fueling the march while live music cut through the afternoon air.

Organizer Jenneviere Villegas, herself a 14-time participant, greeted attendees at the finish. "This is about keeping San Francisco weird," she said. The event she helps run is exactly that: a performative procession with a pointed edge. "Used wedding dresses are kind of strange creatures," Villegas has said. "So it's sort of like being able to take these one-use items that people, for whatever reason, have given to a thrift store and turn them into something that has more adventures."

That philosophy traces back to 1999, when Michele Michele, a member of San Francisco's Cacophony Society, spotted a rack of wedding dresses at a thrift store and conceived of a public gathering to give them a second life. The event originally launched in Union Square before relocating to North Beach, where it has become, as SFStandard put it, "an annual San Francisco rite of spring." Excluding two pandemic years, it has run continuously since the late nineties, which is why organizers count 2026 as the 26th running despite the 27-year span since founding.

The repeat participants are the ones who make the event feel like a real tradition rather than a novelty. Denise Lewis, making her 13th appearance, drove 100 miles from Ukiah to be there. Sandra Gumpert, a 10-time participant, hosts a wedding dress try-on party at her home in Alameda the week before each march so newcomers can find their look. These are not people who stumbled into a quirky afternoon. They planned for it.

The cultural argument underneath all the lace is straightforward: Western wedding culture is expensive, performative, and largely built around a single day's use of objects that then sit in closets or get donated. Brides of March takes the donated gowns and makes the argument visible, loudly, on a public street, with margaritas. As one participant framed it, "It's a commentary on the institution of marriage. We take that messaging and subvert it in a playful way."

Twenty-six years in, North Beach has clearly decided it can live with the annual invasion of secondhand satin.